For many Instrument Rating students, getting into a holding pattern the right way is one of the most difficult parts of training.

There are only three standard entries into a holding pattern – the teardrop, parallel and direct entry. But, during flight, students soon discover that it seems like none of the entries will work. Everything you learned on the ground seems all upside-down and backwards.

Expecting that, Mr. (or Ms.) Flight Instructor has some schemes cooked up to help figure out the entry on this first flight: “Just hold up your right hand, palm facing you, next to the DG and look at which way your thumb is pointing,”  he says. “Wherever the thumb points, that’s your teardrop entry if your outbound heading falls there. Anything below it is direct and everything else is parallel.”

Huh? That didn’t work so well.

And, then there’s another flight. “OK, just draw out the holding pattern on the DG this time,” your instructor says. “There! Don’t you see it? Your entry is painted on the DG just as clear as a blue sky,” he exclaims.

Huh? Well, that didn’t work so well, either.

OK. Another flight takes place, and another idea is offered. And, somewhere after around three or four flights, you kinda start to understand these entries, but you’re still mostly guessing on how to get into the holding pattern. Lucky for you, your guess is correct more than half the time. But, you still have that gnawing gut feel you really don’t understand these things.

Sound familiar? For a lot of students, this is the routine. And, they spend the rest of their training working out holds until check ride day, when through luck and miracle they’ve gotten it all figured out but still dread getting some complicated ATC holding instruction.

It doesn’t have to be so painful.

There really is an easy way to determine your holding pattern entry. Strange as it seems, the method is not discussed in the FAA’s Instrument Flying Handbook or many of the other popular training books.

So, I’m going to explain it here. When I learned this method, the light bulb went off so bright I thought I was going to blind my own flight instructor. This really worked for me and, unfortunately, I had to suffer through a half dozen flights trying many other methods before this one leaped out.

Here it is, step by step, followed by an example or two:

1. After you receive your ATC holding instructions, sketch the holding pattern on your kneeboard. Identify the correct inbound and outbound headings. Be careful that you do not get them reversed.
2. Look at your DG and scribe an imaginary line 70 degrees up, in a counterclockwise direction, from the right-side 90-degree point on the DG. Don’t even bother at this point to look at the heading or any of the numbers on the DG. (See the accompanying Figure 1.)
3. Use the imaginary 70-degree line you have scribed mentally on the DG to divide the instrument into three sectors, as depicted in Figure 1.
4. Locate the sector in which your OUTBOUND course falls. The sector in which your outbound course is located dictates your entry procedure. If the outbound heading falls in the 70-degree slice on the right side of the DG, your entry is a teardrop. If the outbound heading is anywhere in the lower half of the DG, the entry is direct. Anywhere else on the DG that the outbound heading falls is parallel.

It’s as simple as that.

So, let’s try it.

Here’s a typical ATC clearance. We’ll use a fix known as BANYO and pretend that this is a VOR hold. The clearance would go something like this:

“Cessna 12345, hold on the Phoenix three-two-five radial at BANYO, maintain 5000, expect further clearance at 1535.”

First, sketch your hold on your kneeboard. If you sketched it correctly, your inbound heading will be 145 degrees. Your outbound heading will be 325 degrees. Here’s a picture of how it all would look:

Next, scribe the 70-degree imaginary line up from the right-side 90-degree position on your DG.

Finally, locate 325 degrees on the DG. If it falls into the small pie-shaped slice defined by the 70-degree line, your entry is a teardrop entry.

Let’s try two more. Then, you can use the handy diagram in Figure 1 to practice these on the ground before your next flight:

ATC: “Cessna 12345, hold at BANYO on the Buckeye 045-degree radial, maintain 5000, expect further clearance at 2130.”

Sketch it on your kneeboard. If you have done so correctly, your inbound course will be the reciprocal of 045, or 225 degrees. Because the controller did not specify direction of turns, they are right turns. Your outbound course will be 045 degrees. It will look like the following, and you can already visualize that this is going to be a direct entry:

Verify that it really is a direct entry by locating 045 on your DG (Figure 1). And, indeed it does fall into the sector that calls for a direct entry.

Finally, here’s one last example. This time, let’s raise the stakes and make this a GPS hold at BANYO. Therefore, instead of holding on a VOR radial, you will be holding on a bearing TO the fix:

ATC: “Cessna 12345, hold on the 090 bearing to BANYO, maintain 5000, expect further clearance at 1845.”

First, sketch the hold on your kneeboard. It’s still right turns because the controller hasn’t said otherwise, and there is no published hold indicating otherwise.

Second, determine your inbound and outbound bearings. Careful! In the first two examples, we were holding on a VOR radial. Now, we are holding on a GPS bearing TO the fix. Therefore, our bearing to BANYO is going to be 090 degrees. That’s going to be our inbound course. Our outbound course will be the reciprocal, or 270 degrees.

Sketched correctly, it looks like this:

Again, you can already begin to see that the entry is looking like it’s going to be parallel. Verify it on the DG by locating the outbound course of 270 degrees. And, sure enough, it’s a parallel entry.

Practice some of these yourselves. Don’t always use the 300-degree heading depicted in Figure 1. Draw some DGs on some scratch paper using a random heading. Then, give yourself an ATC clearance.

One thing we haven’t talked about are non-standard holds – those with left turns instead of right turns. In that case, simply scribe the 70-degree line up from the 90-degree point on the LEFT side of your DG, then look at where your outbound heading falls to determine the entry.

Now, all I have to do is make a clear plastic overlay of Figure 1 and stick it on my DG. Hmmmm…. so many ideas, so little time.

Now, go practice.

And, may you never end up on the wrong side of a holding pattern again.